Slayer May Cry
by deathgeonous
Summary: After the end of everything, a very pissed off nexus of all realities, AKA The Key, hits the reset button.


AN1: Ah, the almost mandatory Halloween fic. I've thought about it, and I don't think that I've ever seen one quite like this one. Time travel, group costumes, and some seriously bad backlash. Come on in, and see what I mean.

AN2: I know, I know, I'm late for Halloween. Really, really late, but damn it, I've been busy! For my readers, check out at my Author's Profile Page to see what I mean.

AN3: I had a bunch of Buffy crossover prologues just sitting on my hard drive in my Buffy subfolder of Fan Fiction Folder and I've decided to release them all in one go along with some updates to some existing Buffy fics I have out. And of course Twisting the Hellmouth is getting more fics, but that's only because they allow Anita Blake crossovers.

Disclaimer: I do not own the intellectual property that is Buffy the Vampire Slayer or any of its associated characters, locations, items, ideas, or anything else that may be associated with it. Those belong to each of their respective copyright owners. I do not own the intellectual property that is Devil May Cry or any of its associated characters, locations, items, ideas, or anything else that may be associated with it. Those belong to each of their respective copyright owners. I do not own any of the intellectual properties that are any other fictional persons, places or things. Those belong to each of their own copyright owners. I do not own any real person, place or thing. Those belong to either themselves, in the case of a person, or their real life current true owners in case of a place or object. What I do own is any and every original person, place or thing used in here as well as the story its self. Those very few things are mine. And that's all that ever will be mine.

Summary: A demon had caused a cosmic level screw-up. A half baked plan which was hastily made in response, a bad case of time travel and a group costume idea leads to a whole new future. And, as they say, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. The demonic road construction crews are now officially on overtime.

SLAYER MAY CRY

PROLOGUE

THE KEY MAKES AN OPPSY

In the center of a universal black hole with a very pissed off nexus of all realities

Buffy was dead. The whole damn world had been destroyed. And it was all her fault. Well, maybe not her fault exactly, but she was the cause, the weapon, the…, key, as it were that was used to end the world.

Needless to say, the being that was known both as Dawn Summers and as The Key was not a happy camper at this exact moment. No, not at all.

Some utterly brilliant, not, it was more like some stupendously moronic demon lord had gotten the supremely brilliant idea that if the Slayer and all her Slayerets could not be beaten, I.E. killed off, so that it could then take over the world, then it would just have to end the whole damn world, and do so in a way that the Slayer would never expect, so that she could never stop it from happening.

So, this supreme genius of a demon lord had decided to restore Dawn Summers into being The Key again, because it knew that such a forced major mystical happenings would have the extremely bad side effect of destroying the world, due to all of the mystic backlash, and it also knew that a ranged spell affecting her sister's Key abilities would never occur to the Slayer.

That stupid moronic idiot of a demon lord had no, absolutely, positively, no fucking clue as to what it would unleash when it did that. Oh, sure, the world had ended, and then so did the rest of that dimension. And now, now this dimension was a gigantic dimensional black hole which was currently in the process of sucking in all the surrounding dimensions into it at an unbelievable rate, and The Key was now currently stuck smack dab in the center of it all.

The Key, which was once known as Dawn Summers, was slowly getting its act together after getting over the shock of what had happened to it. It was surprising, but apparently the time it had spent as Dawn Summers had given it sentence, even in this form. And now it was plotting and planning and doing that at a level of almost omnipotent ability.

The Key, or maybe we should just call it Dawn, for it still saw it's self as her, had decided to use it's now almost infant power as not only a nexus of all realities, but also with all of the power that all these dimensions that were not only currently being destroyed, but becoming a part of her energy matrix as well by doing so, to go back in time to stop this travesty from ever happening in the first place.

But, when in time should she go to? And how could and should she stop this from happening? And could she change some other things, to hopefully make life better for her sister and her sudo family? Because, in all honest honesty, her family's life had gone to hell in a hand basket over the many years, with them growing so far apart, and so hurt by each other. It was only recently that they had even begun to become as close to one another as they once had been. And then some stupid demon lord had to go and pull this shit.

So, the when should obviously be sometime farther in the past, back when the Scoobies were still a very close nit group, and they hadn't yet felt all the problems of the unfair universe crashing down on them quite so hard. But that was way before she technically existed, for by the time she came into the picture, the weight of their mission had already begun to bring them down.

And concerning herself, she was the cause, indirect as it may be, of the greatest rift that ever came between the Scoobies, and that was Buffy's second death. For ripping her out of the Heaven dimension she had been in was the final straw that severed most of the cords of a once tight knit group into a lose knit group of unwilling allies for a such long time until they had managed to mend their rifts.

So, what she needed to do was not only go back in time to a point in time that she did not technically exist in yet, but do so in a way that would help Buffy be strong enough that she could defeat Glory and not have to die.

Wait a moment, why should she just stop with Buffy? Maybe she could effect the past enough that the all of the others would be strong enough to actually be of some significant help that much sooner and much more often! But how!?! How could she do it? She may be the bloody Key and now currently have more power at her disposal do to the collapsing of all realities everywhere then anyone has ever had, but she was not a Goddess, a truly almighty and unstoppable force of divinity. Yes, she could travel back in time, and yes, she could most likely go to a point in time when she technically did not exist and make herself exist at that point, but other then that, she was pretty much powerless to make her wanted changes. She just could not make the sweeping changes she needed to, because she was pretty damn sure that by doing things this way, she would not remember much, if anything at all, about the future due to the way she herself could and would time travel. She needed to insert herself at a point in the far past that not only was a key event, but that by her being there would lead to a significant change for the better.

Wait a minute, she thought as a dim memory came to her. What about that one Halloween that everyone changed into their costumes? Everyone forgot about it but the Scoobies, and no one had really retained anything from their costumes, with the exceptions of the Scoobies, and that was probably only due to a mixture of both their awareness of the true situation in Sunnydale and the fact that they all had had so much experience with magical events even by that point in time.

And while it was true that Xander had retained to most, but that was probably only because he had the most available to retain, what with all the weapon knowledge, tactics, and over all military training that had been given to him by his costume. Buffy on the other hand had just gotten a good crash course in French, for that was all that she really could retain, well other than some nineteenth century courtly manners that is. And Willow, well going as your own ghost obviously won't get you much of anything in the way of new abilities. Other than a brief overview of what it's like to be intangible that is.

So, all she had to do was, well if she could even go back in time to that point that is, was get them to dress in different costumes, ones that would give them an edge against all the shit they would have to go through, if she could remember to do that that is.

And that lead her to another new idea. If she could somehow, someway, bury deep within her subconscious a few certain ideas and thoughts that would not be erased by the effect that her form of time traveling would have happen, for, just because she wouldn't truly be aware that she knew those thoughts until she needed them, and even then, she probably would never know exactly just where those said thoughts had come from, it wasn't like she couldn't do and change things that she really shouldn't be able to.

If a big glowing green ball of primoral energy could grin, her grin would have split her face, had she had one at this exact moment. As it was, she was in the happy happy joy joy land of thoughts.

Gathering up all the energy she had absorbed from all the dimensions that had been destroyed up to this point, there was a sudden big bang, and then all was quiet as things were reset by the supremely powerful and extremely pissed off nexus of all realities.

Several years earlier: October 31, 1997: at the school's library

A now taller, more muscular and white haired Alexander 'Xander' Harris kicked open the doors to the schools library with an unconscious and twitching Buffy Summers in his arms, and he was currently and very gratefully seeing the sight he wanted, no, the one that he needed to see right now, and that was Giles sitting at their research table, waiting for them.

As Xander rushed over to Giles calling out "G-Man! Something's seriously wrong with the Buffster here!" He was followed in by a Willow whom also seemed very changed, and a Dawn Summers who was now a walking arsenal and one who was now also sporting two different color eyes.

"Good Lord!" Giles exclaimed as he took in the changes of the group. "What the hell happened to all of you!?!" Giles yelled out, losing his much valued cool, or as he would put it, his proper British reserve.

"We all changed into our damn costumes tonight Giles! And we somehow kept a lot of the abilities of our costumes personals, but that's not important right now! Something's wrong with Buffy! Right after we came to, she collapsed and started spasming! I think she's having a seizure or something!" Xander cried out in his panic.

Giles looked down at Buffy and then made a quick examination of her, and he thought that Xander's assessment that Buffy was having a seizure of some sort was not that far off. Now very worried, he turned to the group and asked "Ok, now stay calm everyone. I need to ask you some questions, and hopefully they will help me figure out exactly what is currently wrong with Buffy. Now you say you were all turned into your costumes tonight, am I correct?"

"Yeah." Xander answered for the group while trying to stay calm.

"And you seem to have retained some abilities from your costumes?" Giles asked.

"Yes." Came the reply from everyone.

"How much did you retain, and whom did you dress as?" Giles then asked.

"Everything I think!" Xander cried out while Willow replied a little more calmly

"I agree with Xander. As to who we dressed as, you might want to ask Dawn here, because she picked out our costumes for us."

"Dawn," Giles said, looking at the obviously scared but yet resolved young girl and asked "I need you to tell me everything about who you all dressed as, especially Buffy here."

"Um, ok." Dawn said, feeling a little bit nervous and very put upon. "But, um you gotta explain all this freaky shit to me latter, ok?"

"Yes Dawn, we will. But I need you to tell me about your costumes now, as I need to know if I'm to help Buffy." Giles said calmly while inside he wished he could yell and scream at her to get the information he needed to be able to hopefully help Buffy. She seemed in so much pain, but yet she also seemed semi-stable at the moment, so he might have the time to listen to Dawn, not like he had any other choice on the matter.

"Ok, um, well there are these really fun video game series I like to play. They're called the Devil May Cry series. Um, they star Dante, and he's a half human half demon demon hunter. And that's who Xander dressed as. Dante is like super strong and fast and can for short periods of time turn into a demonic form. Willow dressed as Lucia, she was a character from the second game, which happens last in the story line. Um, she was like a fake demon or something that was created by this evil guy that wanted to rule the world with a demonic army. She was a reject though, and she fought and killed that guy at the end. She's not as strong as Dante but she's like, way, way faster, and she can also turn into a demonic form for short periods of time. I, I went as Lady. She was a human through and through, but she was also a demon hunter. Her father had killed her mother as an offering to the King of Demons so that he could become one, and she had to kill her own father. And Buffy, well she went as Trish."

Dawn went silent for a moment, and just as Giles was about to encourage her to continue, she did so without his prompting "Um, Trish is a full demon, not a half like Dante was or a fake like Lucia was. She was the genuine article. And she was like, way strong as well. She was created by the King of Hell to look just like Dante's mother, so that she could lead him into a trap and kill him. But something went wrong with her when she was made, because she was a little too human and she then fell in love with Dante and helped him beat Mundus, who was the King of Hell by the way."

"Good Lord." Giles said as he collapsed into the chair he had been sitting at. And then something occurred to him, a not so pleasant idea that could and would explain why his Slayer seemed to be in a prolonged seizure. He looked at Dawn and asked "Just how powerful was this Trish as a demon?"

"Um, pretty high up there. I mean I think she was one of the most powerful demons Mundus had, and she had hands down the most powerful attack in Devil May Cry 2." Dawn nervously admitted.

"Then, if I'm right, there is nothing we can do but wait and hope for the best." Giles said with sorrow while looking at his Slayer.

"Wait! What the hell's wrong with my sister damn it! Tell me!" Dawn shouted at Giles in rage.

"What I am about to tell you, you can repeat to no one, understand, no one." Giles said, looking at all of them. After they nodded their consent, he began. "Dawn, they already know this, but your sister is the Slayer. Now the Slayer is the one girl in the world with power to combat the evils of the supernatural world, usually in the form of vampires." Surprisingly to Giles, Dawn just nodded to this, seemingly excepting the truth with no problems at all. "Now, the way a Slayer is made is the previous one has to die, only then can the powers of the Slayer can then be past on. Sadly, Slayers usually do not last that long. Buffy here is one of the longest living ones in centuries."

"And how long has she been a Slayer?" Dawn asked.

"Two years." Giles solemnly answered.

"Two years! How the hell long to most Slayers last then!?!" Dawn shouted out in rage.

"Less then a year." Giles sadly admitted.

"A year! A god damn fucking year! Why!? Why did you do this to my sister!?!" Dawn shouted, pulling out two handguns from among the many guns that now littered her body and pointing them at Giles.

Giles grew outraged at her accusation, while not caring in the least that two guns were being pointed at his person. He shouted back "I did nothing! Nothing to her! No one knows how the next Chosen One is chosen out of all the potential Slayers in the world. And as her watcher, it is my duty to try to makes sure she lives as long as possible while continuing her mission! And I would like to think I have done a damn good job of that so far, so put those guns down right now!"

After a rapid series of blinks, Dawn did just that, and she lowered her weapons. Straitening his tie, Giles then began to tell them the rest of the story. "What none of you know is just what gives the Slayer her power." Seeing that he now had everyone's attention again, Giles continued. "The Slayer's power actually comes from a demon. And a very powerful one at that. Long ago, some very powerful mages captured the very essence of a demon of great power and put it into a young girl, so that she might fight the forces of darkness on equal footing. And when she was killed, the demon's essence, its soul if you will, was transferred to another young girl. And thus the cycle has continued like this for ages."

"And, what's happening now?" Willow asked softly.

"I am not sure, but I believe that now that Buffy's body is that of a demon, and a powerful one at that, that the soul of the demon that gives the Slayer her power is fighting for more control, looking to take Buffy over if you will. I could of course be totally wrong and something else is happening, like the soul of that demon is being rejected by Buffy's new demonic body, or even that they are integrating, but something is happening to Buffy, and it obviously has to do with the Slayer's essence within Buffy and her new demonic body." Giles said while running his hands through his hair.

The group just stood, or in Giles case, sat there in silence for a few moments and then Xander said "I'm surprised you're taking this so well Giles. Hell I'm surprised we all are."

Giles just looked up from Buffy twitching body and asked "Would any other way help?"

EAN1: Here's Cliffy! I know. I am an evil bastard.

EAN 2: No idea when I'll update this, but I wanted to release this along with some other fics I'm releasing.


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